My dad, Phil, lives in Cumberland County, Tenn., where he retired after many years as an English teacher in Prince George’s County, Md. schools. He recently “came up with” this news item:
Recent discussion of a new high school and new programs in Cumberland County has motivated an official from the state department of education in Nashville to recommend the program described below:
Because American public schools have had phenomenal success creating new programs to meet the ever expanding needs of all varieties and classes of students, for example, multicultural education, sensitivity training, child care, drop-out prevention, vocational development, special education, and so forth, school officials throughout the country are adding a new program for a previously forgotten but deserving group of students. Beginning in August, 2006, a high school will be designated a center for the education of dead students. ?The critical needs of these students can no longer be ignored,? says Dr. Estudiante S. Muerto, Ed. D., who developed the program.
Teachers with limited vision have had low achievement expectations for these students, but this negative attitude, especially common among more experienced teachers, will soon be addressed by a special new course that all teachers must complete to maintain their certification.
The course will include sensitivity sessions on alivism, that pernicious belief that the living are intellectually superior to the dead. Teachers will be sensitized to rid their vocabularies of such alivist words and phrases as “deceased,” “died,” “dead as a doornail,” “expired,” “passed on,” “passed away,” “corpse,” “kicked the bucket,” “stiff,” “went to his final reward,” “no longer fog mirrors,” “reached room temperature,” and “went to be with Jesus.”
These words and phrases will be replaced by expressions more acceptable to the dead. To date, Dr. Muerto has been unable to find out what these expressions are, but he is optimistic that he soon will. Dr. Muerto is undaunted by those who say he seeks to find out the impossible. ?That attitude,? he opines, ?is typical of the kind of negative thinking that results from institutional alivism.?
Officials expect that after these sessions teachers will be more sensitive to dead students and will quit saying such things as, ?They don?t do anything,? or ?They just lie there and stare vacantly,? or ?I?ve done all I can and they?re still dead.?
Classes of dead students will be self-contained at first, but as the program gains momentum dead students will be mainstreamed into regular classes. Dr. Muerto says this mainstreaming will remove the stigma traditionally attached to being dead, and that regular students will eventually rid themselves of prejudices they have grown up with. This is the positive and measurable outcome everyone wants to achieve.
Many professionals in this new field claim, with justification, that dead students have much in common with regular students. Once we become accustomed to having them in classes, they say, we will begin to view them as just another valued group in our ever expanding, pluralistic society.
